


Heather Nights

by tabagisme



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Ableist Language, Drug Abuse, F/M, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Multi, Non-Consensual Somnophilia, Sexist Language, Sibling Incest, Voyeurism, predatory behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 09:59:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabagisme/pseuds/tabagisme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl don't like Merle's new girlfriend. She seems to like him just fine, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heather Nights

**Author's Note:**

> For the kink meme prompt: "pre ZA. merle takes young!daryl and his gf camping. while daryl is sleeping, merle and his gf do an uncomfortable amount of drugs, and the gf convinces merle to fuck daryl while he's sleeping. anon can take it wherever from there. <3"
> 
> This is an edited/"cleaner" version of the story I already posted to the kink meme. No beta; errors are my own.

He meets Merle's girl on a Monday. He’d skipped class all day, anticipating his brother coming to get him, and was feeling sick and anxious by the time Merle showed. Fresh out the service (and prison, but Daryl didn't ever mention it, didn't want to prod at the wounds he was sure Merle still felt or provoke Merle to dish out any pain of his own), Merle’d got a new trailer and a new girlfriend, and all the things he has he likes to show Daryl, so in some way Daryl's got them too.

 

* * *

 

“This it?” Daryl asks, squinting through the dark at the doorway, and through the window with the fluttering curtains that’s got a pale light shining through it. The trailer is squat, smaller than Daryl expected, with the skirt painted forest green and tore up in a few places. Nicer’n his daddy’s place, for sure, just - not what he’d thought, when Merle’d told him about it. He doesn't mean nothin’ foul by it, but his comment seems to cut Merle a little deep. His clean-shaven head swings around, lips pursed tight and bloodless around his roll-up.

“This it?” Merle repeats. Puffs on his cigarette. The smoke rises, obscures his glinting eyes. “This it? What, ain't good enough for you, princess?” Merle rubs his cigarette out on the door, flicks the butt of it at Daryl’s face. It bounces off him harmlessly, but Daryl avoids looking at him all the same.

“Ain't what I meant, man. It’s real nice.“

“Shit.”

Merle’s lip curls, his frown cut out sharp by the light catching on his cheekbones. “Shut the hell up, boy, and get your ass on in there,” he snaps, and pulls open the screen door with one hand. Cuffs Daryl on the back of the head with the other. “You’s the one wanted the grand tour.”

Nu-uh, Daryl thinks petulantly, but stays quiet.

They sit together on Merle’s ratty sofa and bullshit for awhile. How’s school, how’s work, how you paying the bills? They don’t talk about their daddy or their mama, but Merle tells him all about the prick he punched in the face - the one who got him kicked out of the army. The way he tells it makes it funny, and Daryl laughs and laughs, lets himself relax and kick his feet up and just enjoy his brother’s presence. Been a long time for both of them. And it’s nice, real nice.

“It’s real good to see you, Merle,” Daryl says eventually, quietly. There’s a 50/50 chance some name calling’s coming his way, but he needs to have it said. Merle’s a dumbfuck bastard, but Daryl feels his absence; felt it every day he was gone, and missed him more than is probably right.

Merle smiles tightly at him, laughs with his mouth open. Merle’s always looked real mean to Daryl - just the way his face is, really - but that meanness softened, sometimes, when Merle laughed.

“You ain’t changed a bit.”

“Merle! Merle, you back?” A woman’s voice comes drifting out from the back of the trailer, and Daryl jumps, but Merle just rolls his eyes. “S’my chick,” he says, lighting up one of Daryl’s menthol cigarettes. He’d already gone through his roll-ups, and had pestered Daryl until he surrendered the half pack of Camel’s he’d stolen and been sitting on for a week.

“Yeah Jo, I been back,” Merle says, raising his voice. “The fuck you been doin’?”

“Nothin’! Christ Almighty, you can’t let me know?”

Daryl raises his eyebrows, but before he can say anything, a young woman comes sashaying out from behind a sheet tacked to the hallway door frame. She’s wearing nothing but panties and one of Merle’s old BSA t-shirts, sleeveless and all full of holes. The first thing she does is look at Daryl and slowly, slowly smile.

“This here’s Jolene,” Merle says.

“Yes sir. After the song by Miss Dolly Parton, you know?” Jolene says, without nobody asking her, in this voice that drips like hot caramel syrup. Her eyes, huge and doe brown, drag over Daryl from top to bottom.

“Hey Jolene,” Daryl says softly.

“You can call me Jo, Daryl honey,” she says, and grabs his hand. Holds his wrist still in her palm, and leans over him, murmurs right in his ear. Her nails are real sharp, and the way they press against his skin makes him shiver. “Sure is good to meet you, sugar. Merle’s told me so much about you.”

 

* * *

 

Daryl doesn't like Jolene too much. She’s handsy as all get-out. Any time he sees her, he tries to wave hi or shake her hand and she winds her arms around his neck, digs her nails into his skin like he’d lift off into the sky if she didn't.

She always wears bright red lipstick, and pouts hard if he tries to get away from her. And she wears the shittiest fuckin’ perfume, so while she’s hugging on Daryl, or chasing him around, or grabbing him or tugging him, that perfume of hers permeates, gets stuck all up inside Daryl's nose and chokes him like smoke. The smell reminds Daryl of women older than she would likely ever be, the way Merle says she puts shit up her nose. Withered old roses, patchouli and dust.

Even Merle gets sick of it, eventually ("Wash that shit off, the fuck’s wrong with you, girl?"), but she persists, still smears it behind her ears, across her wrists. "You don't tell me what to do, Merle Dixon," she says each time and winks right at Daryl, just keeps looking and winking, ‘til Daryl learns to turn his head away, to look at the ground. And every time she walks past Daryl, her gold hair bouncing in waves down her shoulders, the smell falls around him like a curtain, blocking out everything else.

 

* * *

 

It’s one of the cooler days in autumn when Merle shows up, out of the blue. Just like he always does. He’s been back in town all summer, but save for the night Daryl met Jolene and a few days scattered through early July, he ain't seen hide nor hair of his brother. And he doesn't care; not really. Just, it stings him, that Merle doesn't come by more often, doesn't seek to protect him the way he used to.

The weather’s been kinda shit all week, grey skies and a shy sun barely peeking out past a mass of fat, dark clouds. Daryl is laying out on the porch steps, watching a squirrel drag a candy bar out one of the scrubby bushes by the road. The wrapper’s shredded and covered half in mud, and too damn big for no squirrel to be carrying anyhow, so it takes it a while. He makes a game out of trying to guess what kind of chocolate it is. That tires fast, so he starts entertaining thoughts of getting his bow down. Squirrel’s small and gamy, mostly blood and bone, but he thinks he could give his pa the meat and hide the chocolate away for himself.

He’s sitting up, flexing his hands, when the roar and growl of a Bonneville engine shakes the ground. The squirrel darts off, back to the underbrush; Daryl lays back down and doesn't move ‘til Merle grabs him by the arm and hauls him to his feet.

“Lookie here, just who I’s lookin’ for,” Merle says. He grins wide and shakes Daryl a little. The sour smell of whiskey’s clinging to Merle’s vest, his hands. When he opens his mouth the stink of it hits Daryl full in the face, and he cringes but doesn't pull away.

“The hell you doin’ here, man?” he asks, squinting up at Merle’s face. “Ain’t seen you for months.” He tries not to sound bitter, but he does. He does.

“Now, don’t be like that. I got a surprise for you,” Merle says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Daryl figures he must be feelin’ lonely. Merle does and says all kinds of shit when that kind of mood strikes him, and the whiskey _helps_. But his grip on Daryl’s arm is real firm, and even though his eyes are roving they’re clear and blue, no red in sight.

“I’m for real this time, baby brother,” he says, hauling Daryl ‘round. “Get your shit packed on up, you hear me? I’m takin’ you on a vacation.”

Their daddy’s passed out in the kitchen, so Daryl throws his shit in a plastic bag as quiet as he can.

 

* * *

 

Merle steals a cooler and fills it with Bud Lite, wraps his stash up in baggies and clear tape. Daryl brings his hunting knife and plans on ways to make a fishing pole. They’re going where their granddaddy used to take them, before he died - north a ways into the deeper mountains, where Daryl learned how to fish and where Merle shot his first pheasant out of the air with a Browning A-5.

Jolene is coming with, since she has a big red pick-up truck and Merle only has his bike and a broke down Cabriolet. They bring a tent, too, even though he and Merle talk bold about sleeping in the truck bed, beneath the sky and stars.

During the trip, all three of them sit squeezed side by side in the truck's cab, Jo in the middle. Daryl tells himself he don’t mind it, even when she sets those doe eyes’a hers on him, even when she smiles at him and shows him all’a her teeth.

 

* * *

 

Pretty soon Daryl figures out they ain't camping so much as they're getting high. Maybe hidin’ from the law, too, though he’s just guessing on that. He ought to have figured from the start, though. He keeps pacing ‘round their campsite, back and forth; hearing a phantom Merle saying _I’m for real this time,_ hearing himself say _you’re so fucking **stupid** , Daryl, so fucking stupid_.

The disappointment sits low in his gut and festers. Flares up any time he looks at Merle and sees him sitting with Jo, kit out, shooting up or smoking. It’s bullshit. Such fuckin’ bullshit, he can barely think straight, he’s just so goddamn angry.

"Why don't you go rustle us up some firewood?" Merle says to him. He's got a clear jug full of moonshine dangling off his ring finger. They been in the middle of the woods nearly four hours, and it’s the first thing he’s bothered saying to Daryl at all.

"Sure thing, prick," Daryl mumbles to his chest. He sets off into the densest part of the trees before Merle can get at him.

It takes a while, scrounging up the right kind of wood. Ends up he gets an armful of dry pine and some round, sap-wet maple that'll go better once all the sap burns off. By the time Daryl makes it back, the sun's just starting to set, and Merle's snorting a line of coke off the top of Jo's tits.

Daryl stumbles on the edge of their camp once he sees what they're up to. Jo is giggling and moaning, and Daryl sees too late that Merle's got one hand covering her cunt, rubbing her through her dirty jeans. He turns away fast, tries to make some noise so Merle knows he's there, but he already saw everything. Jo's nipples, big and dark, and how she was eyeing Daryl over the expanse of Merle's broad shoulders, biting at her red lips.

He dumps the wood, gets to making the fire. Jo keeps laughing, keeps calling his name.

 

* * *

 

"Daryl, honey!"

"Daryl!"

"Daryl darlin', loosen up!"

 

* * *

 

The night wears slow. Can't hunt at night, can’t fish, and his brother and Jo are either kissing each other sloppy or rubbing each other and it's hard to take. Seems like the only safe place to look is his hands.

Daryl distracts himself digging through the baggies. Coke makes him jittery, and meth - he'd taken it once, on accident, and the high was wild and lasted for days, which weren't too bad. But coming off it, he had been paralyzed with sickness and with a muscle-deep anxiety that had him pissin' in an old plastic Coke bottle and crying at the smallest sounds. Two days like that, and for a week after still he felt like he’d been turned inside out, rubbed raw. He'd promised himself, never again, no more meth. He ain’t sure why Merle likes it so much. But he’s taken E and black beauties before, and he enjoys the high, and - honest to fuckin’ Christ - anything was better than _this_ : the watching and feeling uncomfortable, the strain of being alone and distinctly, loudly unhappy.

He finds some kinda pills in Jo's bag, and they look like ecstasy to him. He washes two down with a long swig of lukewarm beer, rolling his tongue over his teeth to scrape the chalky aftertaste away.

Jo keeps walking in and out of his peripheral vision. Her top is back on, but her bra is in her hands. She flashes Daryl a wide, pretty smile every time she thinks he might be looking.

 

* * *

 

"I don't feel too good," Daryl says, a little later. He’s barely gone through three of the Bud Lites Merle brought along. The one he’s drinking now’s still half-full, the liquid left to go warm, but his head is starting to ache fierce, and his eyesight keeps fading out.

“Oh honey,” he hears Jo say to his - his left, he thinks. Maybe his right? Her voice seems distant and bright. And soft like cotton candy. Pink cotton candy that piles higher and higher, and tastes like apples and cool grass. He shakes his head violently, and the world slides to one side, and his stomach rolls.

Jo puts her hand on his shoulder, and the weight of her fingers is so deep, so heavy, that he pitches forward, and all of a sudden he’s sitting and he don’t know when he got off his feet. He can't stop looking at his hands, at all the lines that cross his palms.

“Oh, Daryl," Jo says placidly, like there's nothing to be afraid of. His hands just get heavier and heavier. "You take one of the blue ones, sugar?”

What? he says, but he don’t think no sound comes out. Jo’s got her cotton candy down his throat, clogging him up. He sees her, shaking out her purse, splitting in two; cursing. He shudders. What? What?

“Merle, your little brother took my damn xanax!"

"God damn it. How much?”

Behind Jo, he can see the fire blazing, belching smoke and embers up to the sky, and the glow of Merle’s pipe, and he can smell wood and burnt sugar, and flowers, dying, ashy flowers, furling open under the light of endless stars. His vision doubles. Dims. He thinks he might be sick, and retches into his closed fists.

And then he doesn’t see anything - just darkness, coming up from the ground to catch him. Before the world extinguishes completely, he hears Jolene's voice, purring like a low and distant thunder.

 

* * *

 

"Merle, honey, you got the prettiest little brother."

A hand caresses his neck; the touch is cool. His head is pounding. Every tooth aches.

"Don't I know. Can't beat a better jaw on a boy, now can you?"

 _Merle_ , he thinks. _Merle. God, help me, I think I'm dying._

"You're awful. Ain't nothin wrong with that face of his. You just mad you look like an old bulldog."

"Yeah, well this old bulldog's the one got you that meth you're smokin'."

_I'm dying._

"Oh, look at him sleepin'. He's so sweet, Merle. I could just eat him right on up."

 

* * *

 

Things slip back to Daryl slowly, barely in focus.

Sensation and thought come as an ebb and flow, climb dizzying heights and then plummet. It's like the first time he ever rode a roller coaster. He was small, and the twists and loops were rough enough on him that he puked on an empty gut, and there were dark, purpled bruises on his sides for days after. It's like the meth, almost. It's awful - awful, awful. Even with his eyes screwed shut, the world is pounding at him, screaming to be let in.

The air smells like pine and like firesmoke, and distantly, like spun sugar, like sweet green grass. His shirt's rucked up, sweaty back bared to the night, and there's a breeze blowing that's got him cold.

There’s heavy hands on his hips, on the small of his back. There's long fingernails smoothing the lines of his forehead, a soft and quiet voice whispering shit he can't understand in his ear.

There’s fingers inside of him, forcing flesh apart.

He don’t move an inch.

He can’t.

“Oh, honey, yeah,” that soft voice warbles, sighs. “You just don’t know what you do to me.”

He opens his mouth to scream, but he can't do that either.

 

* * *

 

When Daryl was seven years old, a young, rose cheeked girl from school ran up to him and kissed him right on the mouth. She didn't really mean nothing by it, just a child being affectionate and Daryl being in the way. But he had panicked. Socked her right in the mouth and bloodied her lip with his knuckles. She screamed so loud Daryl put his hands over his ears to block out the sound. He got detention for it, had to write _I will not solve my problems with violence_ over and over until his fingers cramped, but he couldn't forget how it felt, the soft press of that girl's lips, her pale flesh splitting under his hand. It was his first kiss. No one ever kissed him again.

He's never been touched like this.

“Merle,” he croaks, trying to squirm away from the hands holding him down. “Merle, help, Merle.”

“I got you, little brother,” Merle says, and Daryl shudders with realization, with a growing, sick horror.

 

* * *

 

Panic chugs a slow path through Daryl's blood. He's aware, but only dimly, like he's trying to squint through the dirt on a screen door and catch the movie playing beyond it. He feels, but it's like everything's muffled by cotton. Even the pain is distant.

It's the acid in the pit of his gut that's eating him up. All’a his insides are sloshing around like sand caught in the riptide, and even completely still it feels like he’s moving.

Merle’s thumbs press down against his hole like they’re testing him, the give of his body and how hard they’re going to have to force the muscle. Calculating what it will take to take everything of Daryl’s away. Daryl opens his eyes, and it takes so much effort just to peel his eyelids open, to focus enough that there’s anything for him to even see. And all that’s there in front of him is Jolene’s hairless cunt, the expanse of her stomach and her wet thighs, resting inches from his face. Merle's thumbs press down and he whines and thrashes weakly, grinding his cheek into the dirt. If he breathes too deep, he can smell Jolene's sweat, and the earthy smell of her cunt beneath it.

"Fuck, givin' your poor faggot brother what he needs, you're so -- you're so good to him, baby. You're so good to me," Jolene moans. Rubs herself. Her voice feels like steel wool dragging over his skin.

“You’re so pretty, Daryl - so pretty.”

Daryl doesn’t fight the thumbs prodding him, coaxing him to open. Doesn't fight the thick fingers that fuck him open, either - fingers pressing deep and then pulling him apart. Inside he’s soft like warm bread - of course it’s this easy to split him open, tear him in half.

Everywhere Merle’s skin touches his is hot.

Merle grabs and holds him still, face down in the dirt. It's bone dry, no rain for days now. When he inhales he chokes on a mouthful of dust.

Merle slides his cock into Daryl like he’s been waiting to his entire life. He groans like a fuckin' hog, and all Daryl can do is whimper and mewl while he’s filled all up, while his big brother inches into him until he's balls deep. Jolene eggs him on all the while, telling him how good he looks, how beautiful he is stretched open on his brother’s cock.

 

* * *

 

“Fuck him, baby, oh - like that, yeah, yeah -- fuck that faggot ass -- “

 

"You like that, darlin'? Huh? Your queer ass been waitin' for this, been cravin' some good, hard dick -- yeah, I'm gonna take care of you, I'm gonna -- "

 

"Fuck him, fuck him, fuck -- "

 

"Don't you go cryin' just yet, Daryl -- "

 

* * *

 

"Aw, baby, you ought to give him a kiss," Jo purrs. Her voice runs slow over him like molasses. "He sure looks like he's wantin' one."

Daryl sobs.

"Sure 'nough, baby girl," Merle grunts, grinding his hips against Daryl's, fucking him deep. Daryl can hear the smirk on his face, and wonders if it’s sloppy, if it’s unsure. If Merle knows what he’s doing; if this is something he’s been jerking off to during the darkest, most secret parts of the night.

Merle grabs Daryl’s hips and turns him over, onto his back. Shoves his dick back in with no hesitation, and Daryl can feel the dirt, the hard, wild grass scraping out evidence of this sin on his flesh.

“No, don’t, don’t, don’t,” Daryl cries, and shakes his head desperately, because he can’t, he just can’t. His voice is soft enough he wouldn’t be surprised if they couldn’t hear him over Merle’s grunting, over the sound of Jolene fucking herself knuckle-deep on her own fingers.

“Shh, now, shhh,” Merle says, and forces Daryl's head to the side, shoves their mouths together.

Their mama always used to say Merle had a huge-ass head. _Can’t buy you no hats and expect ‘em to fit_ , she’d cackle, and they’d all laugh, even Merle. But it ain’t funny now, because his head really is so, so huge next to Daryl’s, and kissing him like this he don't quite fit. Ends up that he drools all over Daryl, smears that thick tongue of his along Daryl's chin. And it’s _so fucking stupid_ , because that more than anything's got Daryl’s chest seizing up. Ain't enough to have his own brother's cock riding him, hard and heavy inside him - just ain't enough. He's gotta feel thick ropes of saliva drip down him like candle wax, like he's made to be spit on and fucked. Like he's made for this. And he ain't - he ain't, _he ain't._

“God, Daryl, you’re made for this, baby,” Jolene says.

_He ain’t._

Underneath Merle’s hands, Daryl’s skin is red. Every point of contact lingers like a burn. Merle’s fingers dig bruises out of his hips, nails blunt but cutting him anyway in broken, staticy lines.

There’s a fire that’s roaring in him, should be cooking him from the inside out, but even though it should - it should - his flesh refuses to blacken and curl away.

 

* * *

 

 

"Fuck, come in his ass, baby. Come in him, fill him up for me. Knock that cunt up. Fuck."

 

* * *

 

"Think I’m gonna puke," Merle says. He snaps his hips forward once, twice, then stills, and Daryl makes a low, long animal sound that quakes all his bones. ‘Cause -- ‘cause Merle, his brother, spills warm inside of him, fucks it in deep, and there ain't no going back from this. Ain't no turning back.

Merle pats his ass, moves away. There’s a squelch, a drag on his insides, and Daryl feels gouged open - left behind with a raw, bleeding wound. There ain’t no blood, though. Ain’t no wound. There’s only Daryl on his belly and leaking come like a faulty tap, the world unfairly steady beneath him.

Jolene's giggling, high and constant. He thinks he hears Merle puking and her cooing at him, telling him to look at the stars blinking out one by one.

"That's a plane, you stupid bitch," Merle groans. And ain't that just like Merle. Ain't that just. Jo sniffles and Merle keeps retching, drowns out the sound of her crocodile tears with his cursing and vomit.

Everything is exactly the same, except that everything Daryl is and was going to be is now gone.

Daryl inhales, deep. The ground beneath him smells sour. Used to be he loved that smell. Used to be he'd hunker deep down on the forest floor in the summers when all the wild things were small and new, when his daddy was threatening the belt but was too tired to chase him down and make him take it. Used to be he could open up his mouth, swallow huge gulps of cool air and breath.

Now he never will again. Not without feeling Merle on him, splitting him apart and carving out the precious, soft bits of him. The safe parts he'd been hiding, from his mama, from his daddy, from everyone.

 _This is what I am now_ , he thinks. Jo’s fingernails are scratching along his forehead, smoothing’ his hair back from his forehead. His daddy told him to cut it, week or so ago, or he’d cut it for him. He’d told the old man to go fuck himself. His hair is still long, and he don't know when Jo came back to his side, starting running her fingers through the tangled, dirty mess it’s become.

Daryl turns his head and vomits ‘til there ain’t nothing left inside of him. When the world falls away, he ain’t grateful. He don’t think he’ll ever feel grateful again.

 

* * *

 

The morning dawn comes, and Daryl wakes naked, curled on his side, his head pillowed on his own forearm. He's in the dirt and the grass, and his backside is raw and aching. He doesn't try to move much. Moving just reminds him vividly of the feeling of being wet, of having spit and come slide out of him and run down his thighs.

There's leather boots out the corner of his eye. They're standing stock-still at his elbow, and there's a shadow hovering over him, huge and dark.

"You stink," Merle slurs down at him. His eyes are rimmed red and bulging damn near out the sockets. Probably kept on the meth all night. Probably didn't sleep, and probably don't really know what's going on, save that Daryl's trying to sleep, and no sir can Merle ever just let that be. No sir.

"Smell like stale puke and fuckin' perfume, boy. You gettin' frisky with the bears out here last night? Huh? Fuck if I can -- JoJo, quit scratchin', I fuckin' done told you -- "

Daryl stumbles to his feet, but doesn't say nothing. Just lopes down to the pond he learned to fish in and scrubs his skin 'til every inch of him is pink, ‘til he can't smell nothing but the water on his skin.

 

* * *

 

Daryl doesn’t say anything about it. Neither Jolene or Merle do, either. All three of them spend that morning quietly and separately, together only in the loosest ways.

There's no food for no breakfast. The fire's gone out. Whole campsite is covered in trash, empty beer cans and hypodermic needles. Daryl, soaking wet, stands above where he slept, drags his feet over the ghost his body left behind in the shape of the grass.

They pack up and leave the mountains behind. Daryl watches the cold, far-off ridges disappear into the horizon, the farther they get; tells himself the night before was nothing but a dream.

In the truck’s cab, Jo smiles coyly at him, and she rakes her nails over the inside of his thigh as long as Merle ain't looking. His backside throbs. All he wants to do is scream and scream and scream.

Nothing but a bad, bad dream.

 

* * *

 

Merle doesn’t stay with Jolene too much longer. He was always saying he wasn’t no “commitment man.” (“Fuck ‘em and leave ‘em, little brother,” he would often say to Daryl, who would nod but daydream ‘bout what it would be like, to be with someone wholly and completely, to be in love and be loved in turn. He was so fucking stupid. He doesn’t daydream like that no more). Jolene, with her blonde hair, her thick ass, her big eyes, she just isn’t enough to tame Merle - even if she thought she would be. That’s Merle, through and through. Always out to prove people wrong.

 

 

* * *

 

Jolene comes ‘round the house looking for Merle one day.

Daryl hasn’t seen her for one month, sixteen days. Not except for out of the shadows of his room at night, except for walking past the corners of his eyes. (Truth is, he sees her all the time. Feels her. Hears her cooing voice saying, into the shell of his ear, " _sugar, you got the prettiest little brother._ ")

When he sees her that day, smiling at him, doe eyes shining wet, he freezes up right where he is, in the middle of his own damn yard. She catches him up in her arms, same way she always used to. Digs her nails into his sides and doesn’t let go.

“Oh, Daryl, it’s so good to see you, darlin’,” she says. “You’re lookin’ good. You get a haircut?”

He grimaces. Nods, ‘cause he did. Looks down at her feet and sees she’s wearing heels sharp enough to kick a hole through him, and a denim skirt that’s real short and real thin. When she hugs him again, she presses her whole body against him and he shudders.

“Merle ain’t here,” he says, slow and quiet. His hands clench and unclench at his sides 'cause he doesn't know what to do with them, where he should put them, only knows he'd rather chew them off than do this. He feels on the verge of shaking apart.

Jolene trembles and shakes her head.

"I knew it, you know?" she says. That smooth, sweet voice of hers sounds rawer, more damaged than Daryl imagined it could. "I knew, deep down. Women always do. Guys like Merle ain't no good, don't stick around too long. But," she sobs, pressing her face into the collar of his wifebeater, “I still can’t believe it. I can’t believe he left me like this. I gave him - I gave him everything, Daryl. The best, the worst, and all the middle parts, too. There ain’t anything left of me. I didn’t keep nothin’ for myself.”

Her snot and spit soaks right through his thin shirt, wets his shoulder. He pats her on the shoulder like a friend. And even he could admit - she's beautiful, even with her golden hair all knotted up, even when the black mascara and black eyeliner she wears bleeds down her cheeks and bruises her eyelids. Even when looking at her now makes his stomach churn, makes him feel filthy and sick and like dying might be this adventure he ought to look forward to.

“That son of a bitch,” she cries, over and over. Her whole face is hot and bright red. “That son of a bitch.”

Daryl feels an ache, right above his temple. It’s the phantom drag of fingernails, digging long trenches across his skull. _I fuckin’ hate you_ , he thinks. _I hope you die. I’d give anything to be anywhere but here._

“You’re too good for him anyway,” he says.

“Ain’t like you’ll be missin’ much,” he says.

“You’ll be okay,” he says.

And he squeezes her hand and laughs with her and it don’t barely sound hollow at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song of the same name by Buck 65.
> 
> Also, come hang with me on my tumblr. I am so alone.
> 
> http://sparklezombiefuck.tumblr.com/


End file.
